Amy Reinink

Motivating me this week is the vision of me doing this on Saturday:

Finishing the Daiquiri Deck Tropical Splash in 2010.

The knowledge that I’ll be swimming in the Daiquiri Deck Tropical Splash 2.5K Open Water Swim on Oct. 6 motivated me to squeeze in two quick 3,000-meter pool workouts on Thursday and Saturday. And it will motivate me to treat my body extra-nicely this week, knowing I’ll be asking it to perform at a higher level than usual in a few days.

Will the promise of a medal, a long-sleeve T-shirt and one of these beer glasses motivate me to start adding miles to my long run every week? Yup.

Also motivating me is the fact that I just signed up for the Wicked 10K in Virginia Beach on Oct. 27! The Philadelphia Half Marathon in November *should* be enough to motivate me to add miles to my weekly long run, which is only up to about six miles right now. It really should. But it is not, so I signed up for a race that offers many bright, shiny objects to excite and entertain my inner toddler: a cool, long-sleeve tech tee; a finisher’s medal; a commemorative beer glass; and an amazing- looking post-race spread that include Blue Moon beer and catering from Baker’s Crust, an awesome-looking local restaurant that will apparently be serving vegetarian chili. Yummm!

What’s motivating you this week?

I’m on a bit of a mission to reduce what we spend at the grocery store without compromising the healthfulness or quality of our food (I know. Who isn’t? Or, who hasn’t read 900 blog posts on the topic?). At the same time, I’m trying to reduce the amount of waste we create through unnecessary packaging and such. My efforts to do so over the past year have led to two super-successful compost bins; improved meal-planning; and lots of large tubs of plain Greek yogurt (as opposed to any sort of fancy, pre-sweetened, individually-packed yogurts.). That’s about all.

So over the past week, I’ve redoubled my efforts, leading to a successful cabinet-raiding mission; a Crock Pot purchase; a major grocery haul that was cheaper than any in recent memory; and a tasty new recipe (at what point does “random kitchen invention” become a recipe? Perhaps when I post it on this blog?).

Here’s what I tried to do, and how it worked out for me:

• The goal: Use a slow cooker (which only cost me $32!) to cook dried beans, make homemade soups and do other money-saving stuff I don’t even know is possible yet.
• How I did: My first attempt at white-chicken chili in the slow-cooker was disappointing. Did you know it’s possible to overcook meat—at least boneless, skinless chicken breasts—in a slow-cooker? I can confirm that it is. This first attempt made me realize it’s going to take a while to get the hang of this thing, despite it supposedly being idiot-proof. My attempt to cook dried chickpeas worked out far better, and let to some super-tasty hummus yesterday.

• Goal: Buy food in bulk. This includes oats, beans, rice, quinoa and other grains.  (Cheaper, less packaging=less waste).
• How I did: I didn’t. I bought dried beans, but not in bulk. Maybe next time?

• Goal: Get back in the habit of making my own stuff to further reduce the amount of processed food we buy.
• How I did: Super-duper awesome. I bought a bag of cornmeal for a buck or so, and made cornbread from scratch rather than using the Jiffy mix. It was super-simple, and the delicious, cakey cornbread totally made up for the dried-out chicken in my chicken chili. I made a batch of homemade Larabars, which I haven’t done for, like, two years. During my trip to the store on Tuesday, I bought tahini to go with those dried chickpeas to make my own hummus (when did I get too lazy to do this?). And then I realized I wanted hummus right away, though the chickpeas were still dried at that point …

• Goal: Raid the cabinet rather than shopping
• How I did: Awesome. See below.

Black-bean hummus

1 cup black beans (which I happened to have in the cabinet)

1 tbsp tahini

1 tbsp chopped, fresh cilantro

2 cloves garlic

1/4 cup cilantro, fresh

Spices, to taste: Cumin, chili powder, onion powder

Water, as needed to smooth out mixture

Combine in food processor until smooth. Devour. (Note: All measurements are inexact, and should be adjusted according to taste).

Have you tried to do the grocery-bill-slashing thing? How did that work out for you? How do I avoid overcooking my boneless, skinless chicken breasts in the slow-cooker? What’s your favorite slow-cooker recipe?

Guess what arrived in my mailbox this week? (!?)

It’s that time of year again … think snow!

I woke up this morning feeling like a human being!

This is major. Ever since I got hit with Montezuma’s Revenge’s angry older brother last week, I have looked forward to this morning: The one when I’d wake up feeling like myself again. It’s here, and I’m overjoyed. It’s hard to feel truly grateful for our good health when we’re feeling good and strong, but man, am I feeling the gratitude now!

It’s been fab eating bland, stomach-flu friendly foods for the past week. Still, I’m looking forward to eating big-girl food again soon.

Feeling well again is motivating me to turn my attention back to fun stuff: Namely, the fall race season. I’m not going to run or swim today (yoga seems more my speed at the moment, mentally and physically), but I can finally imagine doing so within the next few days. That means my Philadelphia Half-Marathon plans are intact.

It also means I have a better idea of what’s possible for the Daiquiri Deck Tropical Splash Open Water Swim. I’d been planning to swim the 5K. The fact that I’m still feeling kind of weak suggests that the 2.5K might be a smarter option for this time. I’ll get all the fun of the swim, but none of the shame when I fail to meet an unattainable standard.

Speaking of the fall race season …

I’m writing a piece about race etiquette for Washingtonian’s Well + Being blog, and I’m wondering: What’s your race-etiquette pet peeve? What should every new runner know about race etiquette before his or her first 5K? Let me know by commenting below, or by emailing me at amy.reinink (at) gmail.com. Responses can be snarky or helpful (or both).

And finally, in other news, D.C. runners, make sure you check out the Run for Shelter in Alexandria Nov. 17. The event, which will include a 10K, 5K and fun run, benefits Carpenter’s Shelter, the largest homeless shelter in Northern Virginia. The course is flat and fast, and the start is Metro-accessible. It doesn’t get much better, now does it?

‘He said science was going to discover the basic secret of life some day,’ the bartender put in. He scratched his head and frowned. ‘Didn’t I read in the paper the other day where they’d finally found out what it was?’

‘I missed that,’ I murmured.

‘I saw that,’ said Sandra. ‘About two days ago.’

‘That’s right,’ said the bartender.

‘What is the secret of life?’ I asked.

‘I forget,’ said Sandra.

‘Protein,’ the bartender declared. ‘They found out something about protein.’

— Cat’s Cradle, Kurt VonnegutWe’ve all seen him: the  guy in the gym who seems to spend as much time chugging a protein smoothie as he does working out and spends half a paycheck each month on supplements.

Though the protein-guzzling gym rat is an extreme example, Jared Rice, a registered dietitian and an ACSM-certified Health and Fitness Specialist, says the prevalence of high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets (think Atkins in the ’90s and the Paleo diet these days) and a host of misconceptions about protein’s role in athletic performance have created a “society of protein junkies.”

“I think the biggest misconception about protein, especially among people eating an American diet, is that we’re not getting all of it that our bodies need on a daily basis,” Rice says.

Below, Rice and registered dietitian Rebecca Scritchfield debunk several popular myths about protein and athletic performance.

Myth 1: You’re not getting enough protein in your daily diet.

Though protein requirements vary based on age, gender, size, body fat percentage, activity levels, and other factors, most people need roughly 0.8 to 1 gram of protein per kilogram of body weight, says Rice, a triathlete. That’s roughly 80 grams of protein per day for an 180-pound man (81 kilograms x 1 = 81 grams protein). Most Americans eat that much protein easily without modifying their diet, he says.

To read more, visit Washingtonian’s Well + Being blog.

Early Monday morning, I landed in the ER with gastroenteritis (a fancy word for stomach flu, I think). I’d been vomiting for about 12 hours straight, and at around 5 a.m., I crawled into my runner-friend Karen’s room and begged her to drive me to the ER.

Once I was all pumped up with fluids, electrolytes and anti-nausea medicine via IV, I stopped weeping and proclaiming loudly that I was probably going to die, I started thinking about (and stressing about) the stuff I was going to cancel or skip: A practice session in backboarding and traction splinting for the OEC students on Monday night. Lunch with my SPJ freelance friends. A group run on Tuesday night. A long run and a long swim ahead of the Philadelphia Half-Marathon in November and the Daiquiri Deck Tropical Splash Open Water Swim on Oct. 6. I started thinking about the work emails I needed to send alerting clients that I may be a day or two late filing various stories or edits. And I started, even in my Zofran-numbed mind, to kind of freak out.

Then, I remembered that just a few weeks ago, I wrote a post on this very blog including the following sentence: “I am trying to be OK with the fact that right now, in the wake of a crazy past year and a kinda emotional week, it’s OK to have slightly lower expectations for myself.”

Right. So once I got back to Karen’s house, I sent the emails asking for more time on various assignments. I told our OEC instructor I wouldn’t make the practice session. I cancelled my lunch. I reminded myself that I’ll get all the training I need for the half-marathon and the swim once I feel better, and that if not, I can always adjust expectations for them. And then, I took a nap.

Today has actually been a wonderfully productive work day (being parked on a couch with no energy does amazing things for your work productivity). I’m already planning on it being another wonderful nap day, too. If I don’t post on a regular schedule this week … well, you’ll know where I was instead.

For the past couple years, it seems that my running has come in fits and starts: As soon as I get into a training groove, I’m forced to back off, thanks to an injury, a family emergency or a plain-old schedule conflict.

It can be hard to get psyched up for new beginnings when you feel like you’re always beginning again. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past year, it’s that approaching challenges with the grace, humility and vulnerability of a beginner is the only way to truly get better—as a runner, a swimmer, a skier and a person.

In two separate and very important ways, I did just that this past week. On Wednesday, I booked a flight to Tampa and a reserved a gorgeous-looking beachfront condo on Siesta Key for me and my mom for the Daiquiri Deck Tropical Splash Open Water Swim. The 5K swim has been on my calendar all year, but I’ve found it tough over the past couple weeks to get workouts in, between travel and swim-ruining thunderstorms. So the fact that I booked non-refundable tickets and lodging is as important of a training milestone as my long swims.

And on Thursday, I finished my first long run—a hilly five-miler—ahead of the Philadelphia Half Marathon in November. I’ve written a lot about how half-marathons can actually be tricky for me to train for, in part because some strange part of my subconscious thinks it’s a distance I can call in, based on past running experience. (Hey, subconscious: Have you TALKED to my legs lately?).

My Philadelphia Half Marathon training plan, which I’m already a week into.

Not this time. This time, I’m respecting the distance, and understanding that while have been many times in my life when five miles is a short run, now is not one of those times. I respected the distance, and nailed my first workout.

Do you find beginnings difficult? Exciting? A little bit of both?

I spent the weekend doing OEC (Outdoor Emergency Care, or ski-patrol medical) stuff, which means I finished each day feeling stiff, sore, exhausted and exhilarated after hours of practice and instruction of backboarding and other medical skills. What’s the first thing I did after getting home from a long day of such fun activities on Saturday? Go for a run, of course. The heavy rains had passed, leaving in their wake a deliciously cool cold front. Stretching my muscles over the course of an easy three-miler hasn’t felt so good since … well, last fall.

It’s 58 degrees in Silver Spring, Md., as I write this. The sun is shining. High temps are forecast to be in the low 70s. Who needs more motivation than that?

“I had a strong spirit before. Now it’s unbreakable.”

— Justin Legg, a former Navy SEAL who finished the horrid, sticky Virginia Beach Rock ‘n’ Roll Half-Marathon last weekend just two years after receiving a double lung transplant.

Read more about how Legg survived war in Iraq, one of the most devastating hurricanes in U.S. history, a battle with leukemia, treatments that ravaged his body and left him in a coma, and a double lung transplant on The Virginian-Pilot’s website.

In my head over the past few weeks: I need to sit down and draft a training plan for the Philly Half in November that lays out all the long runs I need to do, starting in mid-September. I need to plan short runs and three days of swimming, too, plus TRX and other strength training for injury prevention/sanity.

In a random Fitness Magazine I flipped through while I got my hair did last week:

Thanks to Fitness Magazine and USTAF coach and ultrarunner Kim Maxwell for the training plan. Thanks (and sorry!) to my hair place for the page from that magazine.